People Find Amazing Ways To Break Computers. Cats Are Even More Creative

On Call The unconditional love of a pet is often a solace, and perhaps never more so than at the end of a busy working week. Which is when The Register competes with the animal kingdom for your affection by delivering a new edition of On Call, our Friday column in which we share your stories of scratching out a living delivering tech support.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Walt" who fixes computers.

"One day a client came in and complained that her laptop would not turn on."

Walt opened the laptop, examined it for a minute, saw that various blinkenlights were all the right color but the display appeared dead.

"Do you own a cat?" he asked.

"Yes," his astonished customer replied. "How did you know?"

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At this point, Walt told us he pointed to "a tiny, nearly imperceptible chip in the very corner of the screen," which he identified as a cat bite.

On Call has no idea how he identified that tiny indentation as a cat bite, rather than the imprint of another creature's teeth, or the result of some other pointed object meeting a laptop display.

The Register trusts its readers' diagnoses of all problems and the customer seemed satisfied by the explanation.

Walt was able to show her the PC still worked by plugging it into an external monitor.

"We can fix the screen, but it'll be expensive," he told the customer, without telling us if they purred at that prospect or hissed with anger.

Have you been asked to fix hardware after animal encounters? Be a good reader, such a good reader, and click here to send On Call an email so we can all purr with delight when The Register tells your tail on a future Friday. ®